I am clearly fucked up about the world.

Just some more offensive nonsense from the Birthright Israel folks.

H/t to Meena for sharing.

Ok, so this film might be employing some hokey “look, they’re just like you and me” bullshit and I knew we weren’t getting through this trailer without seeing some fucking calligraphy, but this appears to be pretty adorable. And unfortunatley, there’s the simple pleasure of seeing Arab (and probs Iranian and South Asian) actors getting some goddamn work.

Oh and Alia Showkat (Maeby Fünke) of Arrested Development fame should be pretty awesome to watch.

I’m not familiar with Intifada Arabic and I ask for clarification.
One answers willingly, in a dispassionate Hebrew: “You know, things like: ‘Shut off you car’ or ‘Open your trunk.’”
Others from the group collaborate in the telling: “And words like ‘curfew’ or phrases like ‘Get out of the car.’”
Their list builds slowly at first, like the recitation of phrases once committed to memory in a foreign-language class and now rather awkward on their tongue. Abu Ra’id interrupts, to remind them of expressions they’ve forgotten: “There’s also ‘Open the door.’”
Building on his suggestion, they begin to pick up speed, adding to the compedium: “And ‘Give me your I.D.’”
“Or ‘Hands above your head.’”
Over coffee and kanafe in Abu Ghosh’s late afternoon sun, Jewish customers and Palestinian host rehearse these national lessons together.

Dear Jake Gyllenhaal,

I think you are so handsome. It makes me want to be a different man. Namely one who doesn’t care about the representations of Muslims in the media.

Regretfully,

Me

Hats off to Muslim Reverie. Totally fucking shocked they pulled Alfred Molina into this aswell.

So, I’ve been thinking a lot of Iran the past couple days. And clearly, I feel somewhat slackjawed about what to say here and now. I guess I could talk about everyone saying something something about Twitter and the revolution… or something about tweeting from behind the chador… or bizarre jabs at middle class Tehrani youth culture… or the total discomfort of Andrew Sullivan posting Rumi poems in solidarity with the Iranian people… but I’m not sure where to begin so for the moment. I’ll just leave it with this:

“I am not Iran’s Michelle Obama. I am Zahra, the follower of Fatimah Zahra.  I respect all women who are active.” – Zahra Rahnavard

Rahnavard’s shout out to Bebe Fatimah is pretty fucking badass.

I am thinking it might be necessary to change the name of my blog to: Offensive stuff that happens in Israel.  (I also feel like i spend too much time talking about my blog identity crisis every time I write something.)

Anyways, this is the cover of TimeOut Tel Aviv’s Pride issue.  And I am coming to believe that Israelis are pretty awkward at executing anything Pride related without doing something totally racist and bonkers. So the copy in Hebrew here reads, “you see a threat, we see an opportunity.”

I”m sure who ever conceived of this project was certainly interested on some level in play and satire.  However, I guess the bad news for me is that I’m of the liberal-set that doesn’t think anything is funny.

There seems to some attempt at producing some queer-liberal narrative of the relationship between Palestinians and Israelis. Which basically amounts to:  “Der, we’re not afraid of Muslims. We want to fuck them while they are performing their religious duties without much concern for the fact that this is totally offensive and may also qualify as rape.”  This whole image and the concept the editors seem to lock in on is that queer sex somehow always equals something radical. Robert Reid-Pharr wrote quite excellently about this as it relates to American racial politics. Which, quite obviously, isn’t totally analogous to the the Israel/Palestine question, but seems pretty relevant nonetheless.  He writes, “We do not escape race and racism when we fuck. On the contrary, the fantasy of escape is precisely that which marks the sexual act as deeply implicated in the ideological processes by which difference in constructed and maintained.”

Below is a pretty tight letter from a bunch of folks in Israel and Palestine who think this is bonkers and racist.  Thanks to Yas for sending this my way.

1. I have problems for image searching the Ayatollah Khomeini
2. I swear it’s for an art project
3. He’s kind of crazy hot

As mentioned here earlier,  I wrote this review of Muslims of Metropolis, you can now read it here: http://www.samarmagazine.org/archive/article.php?id=289

Also, yesterday, I got awesome e-mail from my dad, which is a follow-up to some conversation we had on Mother’s Day about the Koh-i-Noor diamond.  Which somehow spiraled into some discussion about nationalism, wherein my mother basically called my father (all Pakistanis) weak for allowing themselves to be colonized by the British.  Totes awk !!

please read the history of its origin in hindustan present india,its forceful garbing by nadir shah the invading king of pershia now iran.pakistan afghanistan were under the persian empire called khurasan province.after the assasination of king nadir shah of persia,his deputy ahmad shah abdali founded the durrani clan and controlled and founded afghanistan.he founded the boundry from amu river in the north of afghanistan to attak river.the name and creation of afghanistan is earlier than pakistan but still a recent creation.
when the sikh nation lead by ranjeet singh their spiritual leader gurunanek invaded afghanistan the afghans lost the territory from khyberpass all the way to attak river present day nwfp/peshawar to the sicks.they remained the rulers of punjab and the north west frontier province.ranjeet singh obtained by force?purchased the cursed diamond from ahmad shah abdali and kept it in their possession.
when the british invaded that area ranjeet singh was defeated then his deputy dilip singh handed it to the queen.
please read the story of the curse too.
love dad

So, this article in the NYTimes about these Pakistani brothers that run a fetish and bondage factory  is making the rounds.  In total,  I think the piece is totally compelling, highlighting some of the complex economic relationships that the Pakistani state has with the the West and perhaps highlighting the histories of objects we take for granted. Furthermore, the piece offers a varied gaze from the Talib-Pakistan-failed-state rhetoric we we find ourselves obsessed with at the moment.  And certainly, i’m way invested in all that is “queer” in Middle East / Central and South Asia — which is more about challenging certain muscular concepts about nationalism,  Islam, etc. and is generally more of internal conversation.

However, the effort of this article and others like it (Pakistan: Struggling to see the Shards of a Country) seem to work towards this old-shallow point of – Gee! Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, etc.  are full of contraditions! WTF?! The “Pakistan: Struggling to see the Shards…”  seems particularly invested in this project and is otherwise uses totally sloppy language. And I quote, “There is rural Pakistan, where two-thirds of the country lives in conditions that approximate the 13th century.” Because poverty just approximates ye-olde-times living, right? Right.

So, let’s back it up to the contradiction/paradox  stuff. If we consider the fact that the human experience is complex and that there is nothing real or legitimate about nation-states, citizenship, etc. Certainly, one could say that all societies are full of contradictions and we will forever be struggling to see the shards of XYZ. 

It seems like lots of the journalism coming out of the Middle East / South Asia is like being in some college, but not just any college, some uber liberal college where the students gesticulate wildly when they speak and call things “interesting” far too much and are far too burnt out (I have no idea, what this must be like). Anyways, it seems that now we’re all writing for the NYTimes or making a film about state-sponsored sex-change operations in Iran and talking about how paradoxical XYZ Islamic state is.

I guess my problem is, is that I take the world far too personally. I have trouble beating back my training as an anthropologist and the ways in which I understand people, culture, what-not.  I read this piece on Counterpunch a couple months ago by Brian McKenna, advocating for some collapsing of anthropology and journalism.  He wrote:

We need a new wave of writers and journalists, unafraid to do the most radical thing imaginable: simply describe reality. Their ranks will largely come from freethinkers, dissenting academics and bored mainstream journalists who rediscover what got them interested in anthropology in the first place, telling the truth.

Word.

Also  in the news:

• Afghanistan’s only pig
• The West Bank Archipelago